With funds from the Program in Early American Economy and Society, the Library Company recently purchased an interesting printed piece relating to early intellectual property issues in America. Around 1817, Jonathan Prescott had sheets printed up that contained seven transcriptions of his recipes for tanning hides – with essential information omitted. In order to profit from his original formulas while also maintaining control over their distribution, Prescott sold not the printed sheets themselves, but rather the information necessary to complete the recipes (his "trade secrets"), filling in the blanks with his own manuscript addenda (see accompanying images). Our example, shown here, is the only one known. Prescott's oath at the end attests that the completed formulas comprise "a true and genuine receipt."
Although these kinds of printed forms are quite uncommon – especially those such as Prescott's that have been completed in manuscript – we have other similar examples in our collection. The earliest is Elisha Perkins' broadside form granting limited usage rights to his patented medical system of extracting disease by electrical force, printed around 1796. Another in the same format, from the 1830s, grants usage rights for Robert Mauck's patented processes for making apple cider and distilling whiskey. These examples show how people who had come up with an innovation tried to capitalize on their work by selling limited rights to its use.
When the first Congress passed An Act to Promote the Progress of Useful Arts in 1790, it recognized the inherent tension between encouraging new inventions for the general benefit of society and protecting the individual developer's right to maintain control over and profit from his intellectual property. "To the end that the public may have the full benefit" of a new "invention or discovery," Congress allowed people who had been granted patents to retain exclusive rights over their work for fourteen years, after which they would enter the public domain. The act also established a process by which people whose patents had been infringed upon could gain recourse through the courts.
Prescott had this sheet of partially-completed tanning recipes printed at least several months before he had been granted official patent protection for them, either because he was waiting for his application to be approved, or because he initially did not want to go through the process, which included paying some $3.80 in fees and supplying complete specifications about his discovery and providing witnesses corroborating that he was the inventor. Processing animal skins was a necessary but difficult business, and patent records reveal the perennial search for techniques and formulations that would yield supple and pliant yet durable leather for everything from animal harnesses to fancy gloves. Prescott's series of recipes provided important information for the do-it-yourself tanner, including "A new mode of Liming Hides and Skins," "A new mode of Flesh Blacking," and "A new mode of Tanning White Leather." Selling the essential parts of his recipes was a way for Prescott to profit from them while at the same time controlling their dissemination. He was granted a patent for "currying and tanning leather" on March 6, 1818, well after June 23, 1817, when he signed this form. We do not know whether Prescott continued selling his half-completed recipe sheets after receiving the protection of an official patent.
A similar piece purchased with PEAES funds back in 2001 shows a more deliberate approach to the patent issue. William E. Terry printed up a pamphlet promoting Terry's Superior Tanning Process (Albany, 1865) in order to capitalize on his recent patent for improvements in tanning. The fourteen-page booklet – much more extensive than Prescott's single sheet – contained a wealth of information about handling all types of animal hides. Contents included instructions for creating a good leather preservative to use on boots and shoes, and how to process deer skins. Terry directed his pitch at farmers, who, he felt, could profit from home tanning because it would save money if the family made its own leather. He suggested that "skins of domestic animals and the trophies of the hunt, instead of being thrown away or sold in their untanned state, could be manufactured by the boys of the family into valuable furs and leather." "By this process," Terry explained, the farmer "can make leather of the toughest cowhide, or the tender skin of the rat which destroys the contents of his granary and corn crib." Terry also suggested other animal re-use, reminding readers that "the domestic cat furnishes fur and leather which the fashionable belle unwittingly wears every day upon her hands and neck." Rather than supply in manuscript the key elements of his tanning recipes, as Prescott did, Terry printed all necessary information in his pamphlet, selling the entire thing to interested parties. Because he had been awarded a patent for his tanning processes, he had the right to sell limited rights of usage of the recipes to customers willing to fill out the agreement bound in the front of the booklets.
Together, these items show the ongoing struggle of those trying to maintain control over their intellectual property. Patent laws, which continued to evolve over the nineteenth century (as they do today), acknowledged and tried to address such important matters. The printed record, evidenced by these examples, reveals ways in which individuals themselves tried to work both with and around the patent process, experiencing for themselves the tensions between public good and private gain that the first Congress identified in the original patent law of 1790.
